2–8 January 1837

It occurred last night in groping after the ele- ments of that pleasure we derive from literary compositions, that it is like the pleasure which the Prince Le Boo received from seeing himself for the first time in a mirror, — a mysterious and delightful surprise. A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time. It is not some wild ornithorhyn- chus nondescript that attracts the most atten- tion, but it was the man of the New World that concentrated the curiosity of the contemporaries of Columbus. After I got into bed, somewhat else rolled through my head and returned be- twixt dreams, which I fear I have lost. It seems as if it were to this purport : that every particu- lar composition takes its fit place in the intellec- tual sphere ; the light and gay, a light and fugi- tive place ; the wise, a permanent place ; but only those works are everlasting which have caught, not the ephemeral and local, but the universal symbols of thought, and so written themselves in a language that needs no translation into the sympathies and intellectual habits of all men. 'Homer and Shakspear. . . ."

Received, day before yesterday, a letter from Thomas Carlyle, dated 5 November: — as ever a cordial influence.' Strong he is, upright, noble and sweet, and makes good how much of our human nature. Quite in consonance with my de- light in his eloquent letters, I read in Bacon this afternoon this sentence (of letters), "And such as are written from wise men are of all the words of man, in my judgment, the best, for they are more natural than orations and public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches."

Can you not show the man of genius that always genius is situated in the world as it is with him ?